Barkeno is one of my favorite restaurants int he city that serves traditional Barcelonian Mediterranean food. It is a apretty expsnive meal but it is well worth it as the food, service, and atmosphere there is excellent. The seafood and fish dishes are the best here and the codfish I had there was excellent. Grilled fish platters are the most popular dishes and what the waiter usually reccommends. The restaurant has an elegant and sophisticated ambience, and is a great place to go for a classy upscale meal. The interior design is influenced by seafaring, and pictures and decorations of sailboats are evident thoughout the restaurant (see attached picture). The restaurant is located on Casp, 17 and I would reccommend it to anybody in Barcelona. It also has a nice lounge downstairs where one can sip on a few cocktails and listen to the live piano.
Thursday, 29 April 2010
The Parliament approves a Law of Reception for Immigrants that reinforces the learning of the Catalonian
The Parlament has approved today the Immigrants Reception Law with 87 percent support. It establishes Catalonian as a "common tongue" and reinforces its learning among the foreigners. The law establishes that that the immigrants should learn in Catalan their process of integration. The immigrants that attend Catalan culture and language courses with a sufficient continuity will receive a certificate of approvement for the courses. This certificate will be able to count towards the expedition of the certificates that are needed in the process of regularization of the immigrants. The representative of the PSC Consol Fields has insisted that the Law of Reception is "a good law" that will permit "to invest resources in the training of the immigrants and in their process of integration" and has regretted that "some parties are utilizing the immigration to obtain electoral returns". (Source- La Vanguardia)
Barcelona is out of the Champions Leauge Tournament in the Semis
Barcelona won 1-0 against Inter Milan, but it was not enough to advance to the Champions League Final. They needed a score of 2-0 to Win, and Pique´s only goal after a spin move set up was not enough. After getting an early Red Card, Inter appeared to have no chance against a fierce Barcelona Squad. However their defense stood strong and only led up one goal the rest of the match, booting Barcelona out of the tournament and setting up an epic matchup against Bayern Munich in the Champions Leauge Final. My friends and I watched the game at a local restaurant, and the atmosphere was electric. Every time something big happened cheers were heard all throughout the neighborhood, but unfortunately Barcelona fans were let down. It was Inter´s strong defense that stood like a brick wall and stopping Barcelona from victory. Even though they played more than an hour with a man down after Thiago Motta´s Red card, they still were somehow able to come up with a win. Barca dominated the game with over 80 percent of the possession time, but the only statistics that matters is the score and on this day, 1-0 simply was just not enough.
Iceland Volcano Wrecks Havoc On European Airspace
About a week and a half ago the Eruption of an Icelandic Volcano forced the shutdown of airspace over much of Eurpe and left thousands of people stranded with no way of getting home. I was in Munich at the time and my friends and I had to hire a bus driver to drive 50 of us back to Barcelona from Munich since our flights were all cancelled. Even though the Ash cloud originated in Iceland, surprisingly the country´s airports have not been closed until April 22 since the winds had forced the Ash cloud to other parts of Europe. Since the winds had died down, the Ash cloud began to settle over Iceland. At its peak, the crisis affected 1.2 million passengers a day and 29% of global aviation. One can only imagnie how much money these airline companies lost as a result of the volcano´s ash cloud, which was numbered in the billions of dollars. The spectacular event was the worst disruption of air traffic since the September 11 attacks in 2001. The crisis started on April 14 when the Eyjafjallajokull glacier erupted on April 14 and sent a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
La Tagliatella
La Tagliatella is my favorite restaurant in Barcelona that I frequent most often. Even though it is Italian food and not Spanish food I still love going there all the time. It is conveniently located right across the street and my roommates and there go there more often than any other spot. We got so lucky to have such a good place right across the street. The pizza and pasta are what are best there. I usually get pasta with either tartufo, pesto, or marinara sauce or any type of pizza. The salads there are amazing too. Oftentimes when we have visitors and guests from other places abroad we take them there for large group dinners. There is one waitress there from Romania that usually waits on us and she is also the only one in the restaurant that knows English so it is much easier to order with her. When I am in a rush I get the food to go and eat it quickly in my apartment. The food there is extremely fresh and all of the pizza and pasta ingredients are completely homemade. The seafood there is great food and I love the fresh prawns that come with the salad.
Field Trip to Gothic Quarter
One of our field trips was to the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona, also known as Barri Gòtic in Spain. The Gothic Quarter in Barcelona city might have the most traces of Spanish history evident today. Walking around in the area one feels as if they are transported to the Barcelona in the Middle Ages. Its narrow cobblestone streets contain the most concentrated array of thirteenth to fifteenth century buildings in Europe. There are parish churches, town houses, government buildings, city halls, build headquarters, industrial structure, and the famous Cathedral, all dating to that time period. During our field trip one of the things we did was to go to the Santa Mart del Pi Church, which was completed in 1391. Xavi explained to us how the church was built and funded by local citizens something that really fascinated me. We went inside the church and I thought it was extremely beautiful. I really enjoy the Gothic Style and architecture used in building the church and thought the stained glass windows were really cool as well. Another thing that we did on our field trip was to see examples of apartments dating to the middle ages. An old woman even let us into one of these apartments where the tiny claustrophobic stairwell d[Photo]ated back to the middle ages. A bunch of students climbed up the stairs and stuck our head out the top window, a something that was a funny and enjoyable experience. This field trip really lead me to appreciate Barcelona's rich history in the Middle Ages.
Spanish Unemployment Rate over 20%
According to new figures, Spain’s unemployment has risen above 20%. These figures were accidentally published by Spain’s official statistics agency on Monday, four days ahead of schedule and people around the country are angry as a result. Leaders of the opposition PP are angry that Zapatero claims that he is confident his government’s policies will achieve his goal of reducing the higest jobless rate in the European Union. He is under fire for not creating more jobs, and it seems that people are starting to get a bit panicked about the situation. According to the statistics, there are currently 4.61 million Spaniards who are out of work, obviously a very high number. As a result Spain will spend more money on combating unemployment, and to do so they will unfortunately have to increase their public deficit.
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